Measurable utility for scientific influence

I give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a cardinal utility function to represent, through summation, rankings of scientific units based on their journal articles and its citations. I discuss and interpret the meaning of those conditions, its connections with inequality theory and the theory of choice under uncertainty, and I connect the results of this approach to other performance measures provided by the literature on citation analysis.Scientific rankings, citations, impact, additive utility, stochastic dominance

Close-range hyperspectral image analysis for the early detection of stress responses in individual plants in a high-throughput phenotyping platform

The potential of close-range hyperspectral imaging (HSI) as a tool for detecting early drought stress responses in plants grown in a high-throughput plant phenotyping platform (HTPPP) was explored. Reflectance spectra from leaves in close-range imaging are highly influenced by plant geometry and its specific alignment towards the imaging system. This induces high uninformative variability in the recorded signals, whereas the spectral signature informing on plant biological traits remains undisclosed. A linear reflectance model that describes the effect of the distance and orientation of each pixel of a plant with respect to the imaging system was applied. By solving this model for the linear coefficients, the spectra were corrected for the uninformative illumination effects. This approach, however, was constrained by the requirement of a reference spectrum, which was difficult to obtain. As an alternative, the standard normal variate (SNV) normalisation method was applied to reduce this uninformative variability. Once the envisioned illumination effects were eliminated, the remaining differences in plant spectra were assumed to be related to changes in plant traits. To distinguish the stress-related phenomena from regular growth dynamics, a spectral analysis procedure was developed based on clustering, a supervised band selection, and a direct calculation of a spectral similarity measure against a reference. To test the significance of the discrimination between healthy and stressed plants, a statistical test was conducted using a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique. The proposed analysis techniques was validated with HSI data of maize plants (Zea mays L.) acquired in a HTPPP for early detection of drought stress in maize plant. Results showed that the pre-processing of reflectance spectra with the SNV effectively reduces the variability due to the expected illumination effects. The proposed spectral analysis method on the normalized spectra successfully detected drought stress from the third day of drought induction, confirming the potential of HSI for drought stress detection studies and further supporting its adoption in HTPPP

An axiomatic approach to bibliometric rankings and indices

This paper analyzes several well-known bibliometric indices using an axiomatic approach. We concentrate on indices aiming at capturing the global impact of a scientific output and do not investigate indices aiming at capturing an average impact. Hence, the indices that we study are designed to evaluate authors or groups of authors but not journals. The bibliometric indices that are studied include classic ones such as the number of highly cited papers as well as more recent ones such as the h-index and the g-index. We give conditions that characterize these indices, up to the multiplication by a positive constant. We also study the bibliometric rankings that are induced by these indices. Hence, we provide a general framework for the comparison of bibliometric rankings and indices

The pragmatics of a diachronic journal impact factor

the paper argues for a pragmatic approach to the Thomson-Reuter’s journal impact factor. The paper proposes and discusses to replace the current synchronous Thomson-Reuter journal impact factor by an up-to-date diachronic version (DJIF), consisting of a three-year citation window over a one year publication window. The DJIF online data collection and calculation is exem-plified and compared to the present synchronous journal impact factor. The paper discusses briefly the dimensions of currency, robustness, understandability and comparability to other impact factors used in research evaluation

Bibliometric scoring of an individual’s research output in science and engineering

The relevance of various citation metrics used for parameterization of the research outputs of scientists is reviewed. The rationale of judging the performance of scientists on the basis of the total number of research papers published, the total citations received for these papers or the average citation reckoning per paper has often been criticized. The significance of impact factor of journals in which the papers have appeared has also been debated. The h-index introduced by Jorge E. Hirsch in 2005 has gained some acceptance in this regard but its value is highly dependent on the academic discipline concerned and also varies across sub-disciplines. Because citation practices exhibit wide variations among different fields, a scientist working in a particular discipline need not be disheartened with a low h-index as compared to fellow scientists of a different discipline. The h-index has been successful in assessing the performance of scientists of the same field and at the same stage of their careers. By appropriately scaling the discipline-dependence of h-index, it has also enabled comparison among those working in different disciplines, serving as a simplified, robust, intelligible measure. Several metrics proposed to overcome the flaws of h-index are briefly described

"On Hochberg et al.'s, the tragedy of the reviewers commons"

We discuss each of the recommendations made by Hochberg et al. (2009) to prevent the “tragedy of the reviewer commons”. Having scientific journals share a common database of reviewers would be to recreate a bureaucratic organization, where extra-scientific considerations prevailed. Pre-reviewing of papers by colleagues is a widespread practice but raises problems of coordination. Revising manuscripts in line with all reviewers’ recommendations presupposes that recommendations converge, which is acrobatic. Signing an undertaking that authors have taken into accounts all reviewers’ comments is both authoritarian and sterilizing. Sending previous comments with subsequent submissions to other journals amounts to creating a cartel and a single all-encompassing journal, which again is sterilizing. Using young scientists as reviewers is highly risky: they might prove very severe; and if they have not yet published themselves, the recommendation violates the principle of peer review. Asking reviewers to be more severe would only create a crisis in the publishing houses and actually increase reviewers’ workloads. The criticisms of the behavior of authors looking to publish in the best journals are unfair: it is natural for scholars to try to publish in the best journals and not to resign themselves to being second rate. Punishing lazy reviewers would only lower the quality of reports: instead, we favor the idea of paying reviewers “in kind” with, say, complimentary books or papers.Reviewer;Referee;Editor;Publisher;Publishing;Tragedy of the Commons;Hochberg

"Causes, Consequences and Dynamics of 'Complex' Distributions of Technological Activities: The Case of Prolific Inventors"

We provide a framework for understanding the causes and consequences of the observed shapes of the distributions of individual inventors' productivities. We review a literature that begins with Lotka's (1926) "law" regarding the persistence of variability in scientific productivity at any point in time and also over time. We discuss use of the "power law" and the Pareto distribution to describe and explain the empirical distributions. We focus on the upper parts of the frequency distributions for inventors exploring the processes underlying knowledge accumulation at the individual level, including its features, characteristics, and structural trends. Finally we explore the specific processes by which these individuals create, maintain, and increase knowledge accumulation as their careers evolve.patents, inventors, prolific, lotka

Religion-based Urbanization Process in Italy: Statistical Evidence from Demographic and Economic Data

This paper analyzes some economic and demographic features of Italians living in cities containing a Saint name in their appellation (hagiotoponyms). Demographic data come from the surveys done in the 15th (2011) Italian Census, while the economic wealth of such cities is explored through their recent [2007-2011] aggregated tax income (ATI). This cultural problem is treated from various points of view. First, the exact list of hagiotoponyms is obtained through linguistic and religiosity criteria. Next, it is examined how such cities are distributed in the Italian regions. Demographic and economic perspectives are also offered at the Saint level, i.e. calculating the cumulated values of the number of inhabitants and the ATI, "per Saint", as well as the corresponding relative values taking into account the Saint popularity. On one hand, frequency-size plots and cumulative distribution function plots, and on the other hand, scatter plots and rank-size plots between the various quantities are shown and discussed in order to find the importance of correlations between the variables. It is concluded that rank-rank correlations point to a strong Saint effect, which explains what actually Saint-based toponyms imply in terms of comparing economic and demographic data.Comment: 55 pages, 70 refs., 21 figures, 15 tables; prepared for and to be published in Quantity & Qualit